Ohitika Woman

by Mary Brave Bird

  Pedro grew up in the movement and was raised in the traditional Sioux way. Almost from the day of his birth he was included in the rituals of the old Lakota religion. As a baby he sat in my lap during peyote meetings. He pierced for the first time at the sun dance when he was only six years old. When he could not break free, I told him: “We’ll pull you off” He was crying, but told us: “Don’t touch me. I’ll do it myself.” I was so proud. He’s been going to ceremonies all his life--pipe ceremonies, Native American Church ceremonies, vision quests.

  I think that for Pedro, growing up in the movement has given him a special wisdom and philosophy that he will hold on to for the rest of his life. He has run Native American Church meetings ever since he conducted one in Phoenix when we all lived in Arizona. I was not present when Pedro ran his first yuwipi ritual. He was traveling with Leonard at that time while I stayed home with the three younger children. He has pierced at the sun dance, and hung from the tree, and pulled buffalo skulls. Of course my mom doesn’t like this. It’s not her way. But she accepts it now. We have both mellowed and respect each other’s beliefs. So she comes to the sun dance whenever Pedro or I pierce and sits under the arbor, probably confessing this sin next time she goes to church. That’s one advantage of being a Catholic. You get absolution. No such luck for the poor heathens who have to forgive each other.

  Pedro did very badly in school and ended up dropping out, telling me that he wanted to walk the traditional road. He has followed in the footsteps of Leonard, who has little use for the white man’s schooling. Pedro does not want to go back to high school and would rather get a GED--that’s a general education diploma. He is strong willed and I could not persuade him to change his mind about this. He was going to school for a while in Rosebud, after we came back from Arizona, but he just couldn’t get along.

  Pedro is a big guy, six feet one and 190 pounds, but slender. He is very good-looking in the Brave Bird way. He is a good kid, respectful to his elders. He doesn’t scare easily and although he never looks for trouble, he will defend himself if he has to. He is not stingy. If he’s got something and he sees you’re admiring it, he’ll give it to you. He always has a little gift for Grandma Emily whenever he comes to her house. Mentally, he’s still a kid. He likes to go out with the boys and party, cruising the streets and looking at the girls. I am grateful that he is not into drugs or alcohol. He’ll drink a little beer now and then, but that’s all.

  I want Pedro to go back to school, learn a trade or have a profession. He’s a good singer with a strong voice. Right now he has a drum group called the Eagle Lake Singers. His group gets paid at powwows. They travel all over Indian country, on the so-called powwow circuit, but it isn’t a whole lot of money. Every time they hear of a powwow, they jump in the car and go. They’ve gone to Minnesota for the Wild Rice Festival of the Ojibways. They traveled to Kansas for the Kickapoo Dance. During powwow season they get jobs about twice a month.

  Pedro made me a grandmother at the age of thirty-six. It is a bittersweet story. Pedro always traveled with us from coast to coast, especially to Big Mountain, in Arizona, where he had a Navajo girlfriend, Evangeline. I loved Evangie and hoped she’d be my daughter-in-law. She and Pedro were childhood sweethearts. They used to play together when they were little and, when they grew older, planned to get married. Evangie is very pretty. She comes from a large traditional family. Both kids belonged to the peyote church, and they were both sun dancers. Whenever Pedro was in Rosebud they would write long love letters to each other. Evangie is a fancy-shawl dancer and she always makes her own beautiful outfits. One year she was elected a powwow beauty princess.

  But there was a little problem named Percetta Little Bear. Percetta is cute and lively and she was here, in Rosebud, while Evangie was a thousand miles away in Navajo country. And Percetta got pregnant, courtesy of Pedro. At sun dance time Evangie came with her whole family to visit us. And so now here in Rosebud were Evangie and her whole family looking upon Pedro as one of theirs already. It was quite a situation for an eighteen-year-old to handle. Anyway, Percetta and Evangie ended up being friends. Evangie proved to be very understanding. I would have liked Evangie to be my grandchild’s mother, but I have learned to appreciate Percetta. She’s a good woman, a good cook, a good housekeeper. She and Pedro help each other. In time, Percetta gave birth to a girl whom they named Vanessa.

  I went to a peyote meeting at Fort McDowell and the roadman called me Grandma all night: “Thank you for coming, Grandma,” and “We really enjoy your presence, Grandma.” He did it to show his respect, but I really don’t want to be called Grandmother--yet. I guess I’ll have to get used to it. Because of the powwows, Pedro and Percetta are frequently away from each other on the weekends, and then she stays with her mom. I think they are happy having a break from each other now and then. Percetta is good for Pedro because she keeps him away from drinking and partying.

  Of course, the fifty bucks here and there Pedro gets for a weekend couldn’t feed a sick sparrow, so he went and applied for a regular job, which is a requirement if you want to get any type: of welfare. It’s just a formality, because there are no jobs on the res. So they got GA. They get four hundred dollars for food, rent, and utilities. Their rent for a tiny rotten trailer is two hundred a month. That doesn’t leave much for food, clothing, heating, and electricity. They got food stamps and still can’t make it. In other words, they lead a normal reservation life. That is the story of Pedro, so far.

  My second son, Anwah, is pure Crow Dog. He has Leonard’s broad full-blood features and hefty build. He follows in his father’s footsteps. He has already run sweats and peyote meetings. At age twelve, at a sun dance, he pulled buffalo skulls for Leonard Peltier, suffering to make the Spirit let Peltier go free.* When the skulls wouldn’t come loose, my youngest children, June Bug and Jennifer, were made to sit on the skulls to make them heavier. When Anwah finally broke free, John Trudell, who was watching, said: “This is the boy, this is the future!”

  Anwah is torn between Leonard and myself. Sometimes he runs away from me and joins his father at Crow Dog’s Paradise, and then comes back to me again. It’s hard for Anwah. He has a lot of anger in him. I try to convince him that even though Leonard and I are no longer together, he has parents who love him.

  Anwah is a good, smart kid. He’s a whiz at reading and math and because of this it makes me sad to see him out of school much of the time. It’s the old Crow Dog attitude that the white man’s learning prevents a boy from becoming a traditional Sioux. Anwah is rebellious. I can relate to him because I was pretty much the same. If he doesn’t want to do something you can’t make him. He is at an age where he thinks he is a young man, but he’s only thirteen. He is full of self-importance, a real little chief. He argues a lot with the other boys, and especially with me. He wants to be the tough guy. Well, as I said before, I acted in exactly the same way when I was his age.

  At an all-night peyote meeting, June Bug and Jennifer will sometimes lie down and go to sleep, but not Anwah. At one meeting, whenever it was my turn to sing he drummed for me, from sundown to sunup, and all the elders were watching him. He was only twelve and his arm got tired, but he went on drumming to the end. That night Anwah really made me proud of him.

  June Bug is the mellowest of the kids, and he’s lovable. He’s small for his age. He’s real quiet. When you’re alone with him he’ll talk. He’s not violent, he’s respectful. He’s a good artist--he has an eye for detail and draws from his mind. He’s into the Indian ways. Anwah will draw a gangster with a machine gun wearing a red headband with low-rider sunglasses, but June Bug will draw the buffaloes on the prairie, or tipis along a river, or eagles. He loves eagles. He’ll draw peyote rattles, and prayer fans. That’s what he’s into. He’s into his culture, and he’s eager to learn. He sun danced for the first time this year, and pierced on his arm.

  I’m sure June Bug will be an artist. He made himself his own little studio in his room. Rudi has been trying to teach him
neatness in his work. He’ll sit there all by himself while the other kids are playing, and draw. There’s no doubt that he’s gifted. He has trouble with math, but otherwise he’s pretty smart. His hobbies are karate, martial arts, and, you guessed it, Ninja Turtles.

  Jennifer, my fourth child, is great. She likes to be dainty and dress up, but then she’ll go outside with the boys and play in the mud. She is mature for her age and very smart. She loves to read. She is a straight A student and her teachers love her. She is very outgoing and affectionate. She gets along with other kids. She and June Bug are real close, but she and Anwah are always hollering at each other. Jennifer is very pretty and, 1 am sure, will at some time be a powwow princess or American Indian beauty queen. Like all my other children, she goes to meetings of the peyote church and will carry the morning water. She likes to have a part in the ceremonies. It makes her fee! important. She takes medicine at the meetings and knows the songs. She’s been taught that way.

  Like Anwah and June Bug, Jennifer shows a talent for art. She likes to draw. Anwah draws Batman; June Bug draws eagles; Jennifer draws flowers, birds, and clowns. When she was five, I started Jennifer doing beadwork, and she was beading Barbie dolls. I’d buy doll outfits and she’d bead the clothes. I hope she keeps up her beading. Jennifer wanted her ears pierced and talked about it for a year. I did not want to have her ears pierced in a jewelry store. Among us, for a girl to have her ears pierced is a religious ceremony, just like the ball-throwing ritual, later, at the beginning of puberty. So I had this; done in the traditional way, during a sun dance. Leonard’s sister Christine did the actual piercing, and she gave Jennifer little earrings of Black Hills gold. There is usually a giveaway on that occasion. I wanted to give a horse but didn’t have the money. My mom usually does not come to the sun dance. It’s not her way, being a staunch Catholic. But for Jennifer she came, together with her last surviving uncle, Grandpa Bernard Flood. We brought him out into the circle, presented him with a star quilt, and did an honor song for him. And he contributed money for the giveaway. I was happy to have Jennifer’s ears pierced in the sun dance way. It was one more thing to make sure that she wouldn’t walk the white man’s road and throughout her life would listen to our elders and have the stability that comes from being a part of our traditional life. For me it was good to have my little girl’s ears pierced in front of Grandpa Bernard, my mother, and all the sun dancers. It was the last ceremony of the four-day-long Wiwanyank Wacipi, and Jennifer will always remember it.

  My kids are as tough as they have to be. They are survivors. If they have to live in a tipi, with a rock for a pillow, they will. And I am proud of that. Last year they donated a lot of their toys to poorer kids because they know that being a Lakota means being generous. I don’t know what the future holds for them. They are facing heavy odds, but I know they’ll come through. If ever, God forbid, I should have another child, I hope it will be a normal birth, not one under fire, or during a ceremony with somebody frantically searching for a pair of scissors to cut the umbilical cord, or needing an emergency flight in a storm-tossed two-seater.

  * * *

  *“Pulling buffalo skulls” is one form of self-torture men undergo during a sun dance. Skewers are pushed through the flesh, high on the back. Thongs are attached to the skewers and connected to the skulls. The dancer then pulls them around the circle until the skewers break through. It is a very severe form of piercing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Song of the Waterbird

  I am a member of the Native American Church, the peyote church, whose symbol is the waterbird. This is at the very center of my life. Taking the sacred medicine, singing the ancient songs to the beat of the water drum, sitting in a circle with my elders, with people I trust, makes me feel my Indianness, makes me feel as one with the people of all tribes. I was baptized in the peyote religion and I will die in it.

  The use of peyote in Indian ceremonies goes back to the beginnings of history. The medicine’s name comes from the Aztec word peyotl, meaning “caterpillar,” because this cactus plant has fuzz at its top like the hairs of a caterpillar. The Spaniards first encountered people who used peyote sacramentally when they conquered the Aztec Empire almost five hundred years ago. They called peyote the “devil’s weed” and the “diabolical root.” They proclaimed those who prayed with it “devil worshipers” and “witch doctors” who performed ungodly pagan rituals dancing in a double circle around a flickering fire. Today, we still talk of someone “having a fireplace,” meaning a place where members of the Native American Church hold their meetings.

  The Spaniards tried to suppress the peyote faith because it kept Indians from becoming good Catholics and submissive slaves. When they introduced the Inquisition into the New World peyotists and other adherents to the old native beliefs were whipped, hanged, and burned at the stake, from Yucatan in the south to Santa Fe, in New Mexico. While they no longer burn us at the stake, attempts to criminalize the use of peyote continue to this day.

  According to one ancient legend it was a grandmother and her granddaughter who brought peyote to the people. The two of them had been lost in the desert for days and close to death from thirst and exhaustion. The young girl heard a voice saying: “Eat me!” She looked around and saw this little plant, picked it up, and swallowed it. And immediately she became enlightened, grew strong, knew not hunger or thirst, and clearly saw the way that would lead her out of the desert. The grandmother then ate one of these strange plants and also grew strong and saw the way back to their home. And again one of these plants spoke: “Take me!” and the two women, one very old and one so young, gathered up peyote in a basket and brought it back to their tribe. And the spirit of peyote instructed the grandmother how to pray with it, and how to put on a ceremony with this sacred medicine. And so the ritual was born. There are variations of this legend of how peyote came to the human beings, but I like this one best. The important role women play in the Native American Church is symbolized by the woman who brings in the water of life as a new day dawns, representing the All-mother of the Universe and the Great Life-giver. There is a parallel to her in the legend of Ptesan Win, the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who brought the sacred pipe to the Sioux Nation. It pleases me, and strengthens me in some strange way, to see women playing such a central role in Indian religion.

  Peyote does not grow north of the Rio Grande and until about some hundred years ago the sacred medicine was unknown among the North American tribes. The man who founded the Native American Church was Quanah Parker, son of a Comanche chief and a captive white woman, Cynthia Ann Parker. Already a warrior chief himself, Quanah became curious about his dead mother’s white relatives. He traveled to Chihuahua, where John Parker, his maternal uncle, was living. After getting there he was attacked and gored by a maddened bull. The wound was terrible and blood poisoning set in. He was consumed by a raging fever and on the point of death. When some local Indians heard he was dying, they brought him a medicine woman, a so-called curandera, or bruja, who gave him a potion to drink of something she called woqui. It was peyote tea, and it cured him. He wanted to know more about this medicine and questioned many people who used it among the Huicholes, Tarahumaras, and southern Apaches. He learned to respect this peyote and to pray with it. He brought this medicine to his people. He taught his people to worship with it in the “half-moon way,” which he had learned in Mexico. He made up a song to go with it--“Ya-na-ah-oway,” meaning “The eagle flies to the sun.” This was the kind of song after which all our North American peyote songs are patterned. He adopted Christianity, though he told the missionaries: “I accept your faith as long as I do not have to give up peyote or any of my wives.” He founded a new religion on the Great Plains--the peyote church. It combined both Christian and ancient Indian beliefs, because, as he said, it was a religion for all people. When partaking of the sacred medicine and “in the power,” his eyes shone with a bright, strange light. Then nobody could resist his preachings. Quanah was a great chief and hi
s influence reached far. He introduced his new religion to the Caddo, Ponca, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Osage, and many other tribes in the area that is now western Oklahoma. From there the new faith was passed on to the more northern tribes and, eventually, to us Lakotas. Old Henry Crow Dog was among the first to put on peyote ceremonies among our people. I should emphasize that peyote is a natural plant, not a drug or chemical. It is not ha bit forming. You take the medicine only once a week, during a ceremonial meeting. When I first started in the Native American Church I was uncomfortable because it had so much Christianity in it and so many songs had to do with Jesus. Why did they always have a Bible in their meetings? Wasn’t this an Indian, not a white man’s, religion? It took me years to open my mind to religion in its various forms, to realize that we are praying to one great Creator. When I told my Grandma: “I’m getting myself baptized in the Native American Church,” she felt so bad that she cried, and she clung to her rosary. “Go ahead,” she said, “fall away from the church.” And I replied, “Grandma, I’m not falling away from God, it’s just a different way to worship, it’s the way I choose. I’d rather worship with the elders, with the sweat lodge, with the medicine. My uncles are road chiefs in the Native American Church--I want to pray the Indian way.” Now that I’m older, I have respect for all religions. Praying with the pipe has opened up my mind. You’re supposed to have good feelings. You’re not supposed to pray against someone else, or use bad medicine on another person. I have my own pipe, waterbird fan, and black ebony drumstick that I use in peyote meetings. I’ve made a lot of prayers with those three things. And I hold on to my sacred things, but now I can just pray without a gourd or a staff, and it’s good to be humble in front of Grandfather Peyote, and tell him: “This is just me, this is all I have, I don’t have any fancy feathers, I come to you just to pray.”